Part 2

The original plan was to continue through the mountains south, but at such a slow pace I settled for a route to Chongqing along the Yangtze. It felt like settling for less, but the rest of what I planned to see pales in comparison to the empty road exiting through the valley. The only progress made on it was dumping a pile of dirt at the end of it.

I’d anticipated having trouble visiting places as a foreigner in post-pandemic China, but being from Shenzhen was the real problem. Shortly before the lunar new year, there was a government notice about a husband and wife who got the ‘rona. The story seemed fabricated because while most Chinese work late and go straight home to enjoy a fraction of their waking hours in peace, this couple was said to have visited apartment complexes in every district in this massive city over the previous 14 days. A fairy-tale with a bite in reality, the notice was followed by pretty much the entire city getting tested and an asterisk on the “flashy green arrow card” on my phone. Chongqing mandated that people with an asterisk need negative results within 48 hours to enter hotels, parks, and the like. This was a new experience as a traveler because it meant planning around when you can make it to a hospital, and unlike the comfy cozy throat swabs of Shenzhen, here they do the nose jab kind.

Part 1

My last big trip in October went halfway across Hubei Province to the Three Gorges Dam, and just beyond that is EnShi. Its elegant black building complex was a scroll-stopper on a travel site I frequent, and I knew I had to go back. To its southwest lies Chongqing, a large city that was also always on the backburner of places to go. Were the roads flat between the two, it would only take 3 days to bike the distance – pepper in some stops and you could do it in a week. Yet after 3 days fighting steep slopes and snow in the mountains, I’d only gone a day’s worth.

The beauty of Enshi Grand Canyon wasn't in the down but rather the up. Seeing freshly powdered mountains made the effort worth it. I expected that after a narrow pass at the top of the mountain it would be smooth sailing down small roads toward the highway. In reality, the altitude increased and so did the snow until the road disappeared, car tracks disappeared, people and house disappeared. You just aimed your bike at the giant gap in the trees and that was the road. Downhill, I skied down with one foot on the pedal and the other on the ground until the pavement returned.

One particularly cold night, I’d stopped at a promising hotel only to be told they were full because relatives were visiting, but they said there was another place down the road. It seemed they were avoiding the plague, but while waiting on the curb, I was soon surrounded by the (mostly female) family not wearing masks and shivering outside trying to help. They eventually took me back inside to talk to the head male. He was much duller than the rest and kept asking overlapping questions about my “health status”. I could see some of the younger, more-sober individuals in the room shared my frustration at how he’d randomly poke at questions that had already be addressed explicitly or implicitly. I put up with it all knowing the other option involved the building under construction across the street. He conveyed my info to the Community, which related to the police, followed by a limp suggestion that I could stay. On the way to my room up a few flights of stairs, it felt like Home Alone where people who don’t look alike pop in and out of rooms and the only thing that ties the chaos together is that they’re all family. The room was in the corner without running water (so the pipes wouldn’t freeze) and without a heater for $13. I felt like a sissy in the morning for shivering until seeing that snow on my backpack from the night before hadn’t melted.

This week I decided to revisit a spot I didn’t get to on a previous trip; someone had mentioned that Pingtian was a beautiful town in the mountains. Come to realize, this part of the province just east of Shaoguan is pretty rich with interesting sites that could all be strung together in a single, week-long tour.

Shaoguan to Shixing was the first night of the trip and the last night of the year. I watched the clock turn under a street lamp along the small highway, and slept on flattened stalks of grass not far off the main road.

Online maps showed there was an old Hakka fortification in the city, but I was already deep in the city before I realized I’d passed it. Knocking out an extra 40 minutes just to go back was frustrating until a couple of wrong turns revealed there were several of these little castles. Their proto-concrete outside is harder than the typical mud brick houses build by the other little pig and have tiny flanged windows just big enough for someone to shoot out of. Inside are 5 to 6 stories of cramped rooms, not much bigger than a walk-in closet – probably 40 rooms in this building roughly the size of a two-story estate in the Midwest. This isn’t the one I rode in front of in the video, that one was locked; it was another left to crumble among newer buildings.

From there I headed along the highway to Pingtian up into the mountains with an ambitious goal of getting there in a day. I made it, barely, and instead of trying to hunt for a sleeping spot where it gets more developed, I spotted an orchard along the road. It was too steep beneath the trees but on the top of the hill there was a spot sheltered from the wind. The day started with a slow-burning sky waiting for the sun to rise over the mountains, and from there I entered the worst day of the trip.

All of the pictures online of Pingtian are of gingko trees about to drop their bright yellow leaves, but coming two months too late the party was over. It sounds crazy to expect fall foliage in January, but for some reason the trees here change colors very late, if at all. The ones across from my house didn't change until February. I cycled down roads hoping to find a part of the village that was worth seeing or perhaps miraculously discover a tree that had held on to its leaves in anticipation of my arrival, and while turning back from a road to nowhere, I realized the red car I just passed had also turned around. I waited by the road to check my map, and they waited in the street. Being treated as a spectacle that people can just ignore social conventions for is all too common. I turned down a side road to brush them off or see if they were really following me, but the road didn't go anywhere either. The car was waiting for me at the intersection as I headed back.

I made a break for a pedestrian path, came to the back side of a housing unit, and wheeled my bike between two houses onto a small road. As I started into the clear, the car came barreling down after me. I turned off the road again and hurried to a restaurant trying to hide my bike on the side of the building.

I was being paranoid, but went in the back entrance anyway and waited at a table letting my mind have its peace. I could see through the front doors a white car pulling up in front of the restaurant and said something to owner. A man and a woman were pointing inside, and when I came out they put their masks on and told me to show my health pass and my transit pass. These staples in post-pandemic China show that you haven’t traveled to risky places or failed a covid test. Then a man in a police uniform from a black SUV told me to show him the same, except he was very apologetic and overly-friendly. “Sorry to bother you, do you have a vaccination?” “No” “Oh ok, you should really get one, they’re very easy to get. Do you have a nucleic acid test?” “Yes, from November” “Oh, I see. You must be hungry, you should order some food.” As I waited, an ambulance pulled up and I just glared at him. “Please be understanding. These are special times, the pandemic is very severe.” It was a line they all say. I approached the ambulance driver who started rushing to get his mask on. After the test, I asked if I can go. Another, older man came who I hoped would put all of this hysteria to rest told me I could go once the results came back in about one hour. I knew this wasn’t true, this wasn’t like developing film at Walgreens. It could take the rest of the day waiting in this uninspiring town. By 2:30 the results came back negative, and they waved me on with unreturned politeness as I reassessed my trip.

(The dead bat on the side of the road asks, “Could you not discriminate?”)

Checking for directions at the bottom of the mountain, a man came out of a van and asked where I was from; I just kept riding. It was too risky. Soon it was dark, and the road became so broken that there was only a flat spot for several rotations of the wheel before hitting the next series of gouges. It was like this for at least an hour. A dump truck driver, one of the many who had turned the rural road into alligator skin, leaned out of his cab and asked me where I was from. I ignored him too, but he shouted to turn left when the road forks; he was just being nice. I made it to Longnan and the burning in my stomach I assumed was from stress turned to a spinning head and weakness, and I felt sicker than I had in a long time. There was nothing in me to continue the two hours of night riding to Wudang Mountain. Luckily, the hotel I went to didn’t turn me away, probably because I was shivering and stammering my words.

Strength found me in the morning for a ride to a massive fortified city that took 29 years of ramming sand, pebbles, lye, gluttonous rice, and brown sugar among other things into three story high walls. Along the way I spotted a similar structure on a much smaller scale. Its only door was latched but unlocked; I had the whole place to myself. This leg was a detour, and the mountains I was really hoping to see were still hours away. There was a chance the sun would set before I got there, and after huffing it through endless hills made it just in time for the sunset.

Merry Christmas! This year I got to check off something that’s mostly likely because I live in China and not because I’m pretty. Usually making commercials in Shenzhen starts with contacting a modelling agency and getting catfished by Eastern Europeans on disposable visas. Good actors are out of the question. My team sometimes steps in to be a white face, and generally I’d save the feeling of embarrassment for another occasion, but when faced with the possibility of getting to be in a Christmas commercial, actually volunteered. My team was skeptical, “Wait, really?”

Where can you find a snowy landscape and an oven large enough to make an entire wall out of gingerbread? Well, we didn’t know either so we stuck with CGI and styrofoam. The entire thing was a glorious sham.

In the script I had a couple minor roles of a gumdrop affixer and then later portraying a peppermint grinder, neither of which required much face time. Halfway through the shoot I hit my big break – it was the moment any aspiring actor paid on company hours can ask for. One of the coordinators came in on the set and told the actors they had to leave; the police would be there any minute. Having a legitimate visa, I soon filled the A-list role of Cream Layer #2. It was a complicated part I hadn’t understudied, but to everyone’s surprise, I nailed in the first take. While I’ve laid mortar, spread cream, and done a bit with a palette knife, the inspiration behind these 0.8 seconds was the thought of simply enjoying what I was doing because it was important to me. It’s been a while since I had this feeling personally, but I still watch cartoons.

Several weeks later the video girl asked if I want to be a hand model, which was a bit of a let down because I thought she said head model (you know I have experience).

In a studio lot 10 minutes from where we work, I walked in on a white-on-white set contrasted by one of our big honkin’ black boxes. “Just press and hold for 3 seconds… wait for it to beep…”. “…uhp, too fast, pause longer in between…” “...plug the male into the female for the black cable, ok and now the red…” “Great work!”. I’d hop out of the set and nine guys would redundantly start doing all of the arrangements for the next set and call me when it was ready. It was as close as I’ll get to being a dignitary. The videos are to be for tutorials on topics that most people learned how to do in the 20th century, but I don’t let it get to me, my dainty mitts got air time.

Hope this isn’t too spooky for ya!

ALONG THE WAY:

林寨 (forest stronghold):

Somewhere on page 19 of my favorite site for travelling in China bytravel.cn, there was an entry for this place. I jotted it down in my to go list thinking it would be tacked on to a longer trip. It was well worth it as the centerpiece for this one. Giant castle-like buildings, three or four stories high, were individualistic enough to not be repetitive. The charm comes in their ruin unfortunately. Several had deteriorated to the point that only their shells remained. There were a few that functioned as tourist attractions. A local yokel would unlock the main door as if it were a storage unit, and I walked in alone to seeing the central room. The surrounding wall houses apartments overlooking the inner courtyard, where there’s a well. Most of these seemed unoccupied, but a few still dared to live in them.

Village:

Bike trip from Nanchang to Wuhan (ground-zero for Covid). I thought I booked the hard sleeper and discovered I’d be spending 11 hours on a hard seater. The train was packed, and the only option was to book a table in the dining car and sleep like a Tetris piece on the two seater bench.

Along the way:

Rice harvesting - some fields are bright yellow and others prickly with cut stalks. The roads become places to dry the husks before they’re processed.

UNESCO Lushan Mountain - the view from the top was ok, and there wasn’t a cozy nature element because they had karaoke on the loud speakers, but the little alpine style town was something I didn’t think China could produce.

My friend’s hometown - the road to this little settlement in the mountains was all about going down small roads to even smaller ones. Each stretch would have a place where no one lives, and then a little blip of buildings, and then back to fields. I stopped to ask where the Tan family lived, but in these parts, every family is Tan. They called the police, and my friend had to come rescue me.

Three Gorges Dam - $6 for a bus seemed outrageous for a 10 minute ride. And the view of the dam from the platform wasn’t worth the hour long train ride out there. Dejected, you walk out to get back on the bus, but get to see the back side of dam for a slightly better view. The bus takes you to another spot at the base of the dam for the grand reveal, and the Three Gorges Dam lives up to everything you’ve heard about it. Plus, since it was getting dark, it became lit up in an unreal wall of orange lights.

A new job in a new city was where I pictured myself when thinking about my escape from Huawei, but it seemed Shenzhen was the only place hiring. My new job is on the other side of the city, so in a way, it feels like a different city. The subtropical weather and lack of indigenous culture are the same, and so is the process of finding a house.

The way apartment listings work in China I can only assume is illegal in more developed parts of the world. Maybe 3 out of 10 things on the (reliable) website are what they say they are, and the rest are bait and switch. I’d started out dignified and indignant not doing business with people who’d say things like “Oh shucks, by golly we done rented that’n out yesterdee” and then show you things in the same price range but laughably worse. But that’s how it is. The only thing you can do is get their contact information and tell them your requirements: separate bedroom, kitchen, Western toilet, decent view. Though most ignored these, the last one no one understood as if there’s no middle ground between only seeing the adjacent building and a commanding view of the four corners of the earth.

The first time I went to see a place, the ladies in the management office shot uncasual glances my way as the agent went in to get the key. He came out and said it’d been rented. Come to find out, that was code for no foreigner allowed. Several other agents were more direct.

Right as I started my house search, Shenzhen was hit with several reported cases that created a furor (suspiciously around the time vaccines were being pushed). The aversion people showed me as a foreigner came back as did the barricades and checkpoints. Most of the places in the area that I could afford wouldn’t rent to foreigners, and the places that would were rip-offs. On an app called “Warm Room” (暖房), I found a sublet that checked all the boxes. “With a little effort, I persuaded management to let a foreigner stay,” he said on a Monday. “Management doesn’t allow foreigners,” he said. What bothered me most was that it was still Monday, only a few hours later in person. I popped my knuckles, limbered up a bit, and got to work using logical reasoning with the management.

“Why can’t I live here”

“This community doesn’t allow foreigners because the pandemic is really bad right now”

“What does that have to do with me? I haven’t left since 2019”

“Actually we’ve never allowed foreigners to live here”

“What about that foreigner that just went in”

“He’s been renting from us for a couple of years”

It was no use. My lease on my old apartment was ending soon, and I was getting tired of playing Jim Crow so I called the cops. Not 110, just the local police station and talked to a woman who, unable to snake out with “that’s not my jurisdiction”, just never “got back to me”. Because the sublettor only benefitted from my success, he helped me wring out the numbers of the big boss (in Hong Kong) and someone known as “the Grid” (网格) from the frantic receptionist trapped on a scooter that wasn’t starting. The Grid never replied, but somewhere behind the scenes the gears were turning. The apartment gave me some hoops to jump through, and I was in.

One of the hoops was getting tested for the vaccine. It wasn’t discriminatory because the entire district, and maybe most of the city had to get tested three or four times in two weeks. Foldable canopies running into the night were set up in the city’s unoccupied spaces. The queues marked by black cones and flimsy “Caution Safety” tape went quickly. My first time through, I was batoned a plastic test tube of pink gel and gave it to a girl in hazmat gear. For every new person, she took off one pair of gloves, rubbed hand sanitized on the second pair taped to her gown, and then put on a fresh pair. After ding-dong-ditching your uvula with a cotton swab, she snapped the tip off into the gel. The second time, I realized the tube is only given to the first person in your squad of 7 or 8 that all share the same tube, so if one person had the bing (that’s Chinese for disease), you all get flagged.

The results magically appear 48 hours later on this app and then expires after 72. My community had police waiting at the entrance to check for results. No one was allowed to enter unless they had followed the public health mandate. If you didn’t, the only way you were getting to sleep in your own bed that night would be to fight the cops with homemade weapons, scale the 12 foot fence over its pointed top, or go out the back entrance of this one supermarket on the corner. In China, there’s a backdoor for everything*, and sometimes they’re literal.

*I ran into a friend just getting back from driving school. She said it was boring because she just sat in the car for an hour. Not as a passenger, in the driver seat. No one else in the car. Not driving, just looking straight ahead. Because they’ll see you if look at your phone. The camera will see you. The camera in the car. The government will see you. You need proof of driving hours. Because it’s cheaper to pretend you’re driving, and the government can’t tell the difference.

This is my place — bedroom to the immediate right and bathroom around the corner.